


A Knight in Marble Armor

by Linorien



Series: 007 Fest 2019 [11]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 16:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19479466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linorien/pseuds/Linorien
Summary: So it turns out, reincarnation is real. Bond had never believed it.Sure magic existed, but you had to draw a line.So how did he end up as a chess piece?





	A Knight in Marble Armor

**Author's Note:**

> A few of you liked the idea when I shared it on tumblr, so enjoy a whole mini fic.

So it turns out, reincarnation is real. Bond had never believed it. 

Sure magic existed, but you had to draw a line. Wizards and witches? Yeah, that was most of Q Branch. Shapeshifters? Less believable, but there’d been this one werewolf in southern London he used to drink with and he was pretty sure one of the Navy guys on his ship was a selkie. He was even prepared to believe in faeries roaming modern cities, not just the highlands. 

But reincarnation had seemed ridiculous. And even when believers talked about the phenomena, it was always being reincarnated as a person or as an animal. 

So how did he end up as a chess piece?

He does remember being in a building that he rigged with explosives. Explosives he stole from Q branch. He’s fuzzy on the details of what went wrong, but evidently he didn’t make it. He died, and his...soul? Consciousness? Got transferred into this chess piece. 

Not just any chess piece of course. He was a knight. He couldn’t move unless the game was being played, but he just knew that that’s what he was. And he stayed in resting position, astride a rearing horse holding a sword high above his head, for what he estimated to be three weeks before the chess board was moved from a high shelf down to a table to play. 

And it was only then that he saw the rest of the room he was in. It was Q’s office. He was part of Q’s chess set. 

He had played chess once with Q before. He’d ordered the pieces to move across the board and into all the traps Q had lain for his pieces. He never played again, preferring card games. And now it was Q’s voice that commanded him to move. 

“Knight to C3,” he commanded and suddenly Bond was moving. The horse he was riding leapt over the pawn in front of him and into row 3. Bond instinctively leaned forward to keep his balance. The horse trotted to C and then reared up again and Bond felt himself freeze. 

That was a sensation he never wanted to experience again. His limbs felt disconnected from his mind as they moved all by themselves under Q’s command. He couldn’t even move his eyes to see Q. The next time his piece was called to action, he tried to move something, anything differently, but his actions were all preprogrammed. He tried to make any sort of noise, but it was no use. 

He was simply a chess piece to be moved at Q’s whim. He wondered if this was cosmic punishment for all the times he went against Q’s orders on a mission. 

Bond had also forgotten the brutality involved in wizard’s chess. Normal chess, you moved the plastic pieces yourself and when you captured another piece, maybe you tipped it over, or you just moved it off the board for your competitor. But in wizard’s chess, the pieces had weapons.

The pawns drew two short shorts and stood up to slash a bishop across the board. The rooks fired a magic arrow from the battlements and threw the other knight clear off the board. Bond, himself, had a sword that swept down and slashed many pawns cowering under their shield. Even the queen had a magic wand that decimated other pieces. 

Those were the worst to watch. A bolt of light shot out from Q’s queen and hit a piece square in the center and the piece would break apart. Not all of those pieces would get put away when the game was done. Sometimes they came back a couple days later, signs of glue and magic binding large pieces back together. But sometimes the damage was too much. A new piece would replace it. Bond wondered if it hurt. 

Q played many games. He played against M a lot. R on occasion. He tried to play Eve, but she forfeited early on and took him out for drinks instead. There were other voices Bond didn’t recognise. And on one memorable occasion, he played by himself, getting himself increasingly drunk and weepy. That game only ended because the mastermind fell asleep. He wasn’t facing Q, but he could hear the man sniffling in his sleep and wished he could comfort him in some way. 

But eventually his turn came. There was a long pause, common when Q played against another skilled player, and then he said, “Knight to B7.” He cantered obediently to the square. He was facing the queen. 

A voice he did not recognise said, “Queen to B7.” Across from him, she raised her wand. A bright green light flew toward him and he knew no more. 

Well, no more until his consciousness landed in the rubber dragon on Q’s desk that he talks to when debugging code.


End file.
